1 minute read
Make It Make Sense
Numbers are fun to look at and shake your head, but why not bring them to life?
by Madeline Vega
I decided my driving problem was not really about speed or even distance. My mom used to act like an 8-minute trip over 2.9 miles to drop me off or pick me up from the high school was too much. It might take me four times as long to go only two miles farther to drop off my middle schooler. Why? There are more people in one square mile in Brooklyn than there are in my mom’s whole suburb. With all the people come all the stop lights and all the double parked vehicles. There are basically no parking spots, so almost everything requires parallel parking or blocking traffic—or blocking traffic while you try to parallel park. When I started looking into population density to see how much more crowded it is where I drive than where I needed my mom to drive me, I easily found census data for how densely populated hot spot New Rochelle is (7,445 people/mile 2 ) and Broward County Florida (1,444 people/mile 2 ) that refused to let cruiseships dock. Rather than bore you with my analysis and commentary, though, I made models with Lego people. Enjoy!
The difference between where I drive now and where I learned to drive
Bensonhurst - 48,400 people/square mile
Madeline Vega
St. Charles is the kind of place police write tickets for not stopping long enough at a stop sign.
St. Charles, IL - 2,257.7 people/square mile
New York City - 25,578 people/square mile as a whole is nowhere near as densely populated as some sections of Brooklyn
Madeline Vega
Kane County, IL - 990 people/square mile
All of New York City (305 miles squared ) could easily fit into Kane County (502 miles squared )
Paris - 55,855 people/square mile
Madeline Vega
1 Lego person represents 317 1/3 residents
Madeline Vega
176 Lego people fit on one board to represent 55,855 residents of Paris (the highest population density I could find). So for these models, 1 green square equals 1 mile squared and 1 Lego person represents 317 1/3 residents
